Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/719

Rh was mistaken by him. I do not myself pretend to a very intimate acquaintance with the periodical literature of thirty or forty years ago, and I am afraid that not even in the pursuit of knowledge could I be tempted to plunge into such a dreary and unbuoyant mare mortuum. With respect to the papers of to-day it is certainly not difficult to discern a peculiarity in their styles, or in what does duty for style in them. A large volume, for instance, might be profitably written, if, perhaps, not so profitably read, on the various stylistic peculiarities of the Times. There used to be the famous and memorable affectation of peculiar spelling, or what one might perhaps, after the story of King Sigismund, call the super-orthographicam style. Then, some ten years ago, there came the great "queen-of-Sheba" style, which consisted in opening an article with some fact or allusion which had the remotest (or not the remotest) connection with the subject. Of late, perhaps, there has been less unity; but one style has never been lacking — a style which might be called the magisterial, but which I (having been once informed by a great master thereof, with whom I presumed to differ, that "all persons of common sense and morality" thought as he did) prefer to call the common-sense-and-morality style. This style is convenient for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. If you approve, you can point out not too enthusiastically that the view or proceeding in question is the only one which common sense and morality allow; if (which is possible) you do not understand, common-sense, by not understanding also, will help you out of the difficulty; and if you disapprove, morality will be as violently outraged as you like. Of the weekly papers, it is impossible not to admire the free-and-easy doctrinaire-ism of the Spectator, which is almost entirely an affair of style depending on a sedulous avoidance of ornate language, and a plentiful use of colloquial words and phrases about the least colloquial matters. Then there is the style of the Saturday Review in its political articles, a style which appears to be framed on the principle that thoughts and words economize weight by being meted out in small doses, and that a pound of buckshot will go farther than a pound of bullets. Lastly, the inquirer into such things will not neglect the peculiar aridity of certain of the older Quarterlies, which seem to have retained the ponderous clauses of other days, while neglecting the form which saved those clauses from being cumbrous. But in most of all this we shall find little to bear out De Quincey's verdict. Long and involved sentences, unduly stuffed with fact and meaning, are what he complains of; and though there is no doubt that we should not have to go far in order to find such at the present day, yet it does not appear, to me at least, that the main fault of contemporary English style is of this kind. On the contrary, the sin of which I should chiefly complain is the sin of over-short sentences, of mere gasps instead of balanced periods. Such a paragraph as the following will illustrate what I mean: "That request was obeyed by the massacre of six out of the surviving princes of the imperial family. Two alone escaped. With such a mingling of light and darkness did Constantine close his career." I think that any one who considers this combination of two mutilated clauses with an interjectional copula, and who perceives with what ease its hideous cacophony might have been softened into a complete and harmonious sentence, must feel certain that its present form is to some extent intentional. The writer might very well have written: "That request was obeyed by the massacre of six out of the eight surviving princes of the imperial family, and the career of Constantine was closed in a mixture of light and darkness." Why did he not?

Again, let us take a book of recent date, whose style has received considerable praise both in England and abroad — Mr. Green's "Short History of the English People." The character of Elizabeth is perhaps the most carefully written, certainly the most striking, passage in the book, and contains a most elaborate statement of that view of the great queen which many historical students now take. It enforces this view with the greatest energy, and sets it before us in every detail and difference of light and shade.